


so delicate the bones

by erce3



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Darkest Timeline, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pining, Sort of? - Freeform, also sort of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:28:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25460929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erce3/pseuds/erce3
Summary: Troy’s throat still sometimes feels like it’s burning, a phantom pain, and he chases the memory of hearing his own voice the way only he can hear it for a long time afterwards.*or, the study group & the aftermath of the darkest timeline
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Comments: 14
Kudos: 94





	so delicate the bones

**Author's Note:**

> yes, im ignoring the s4 finale; technically, it's all in jeff's head anyway? the title is from anne carson. tw for: descriptions of pain (troy discussing his injury), self-harming behavior, mental hospitals, addiction; this is a surprisingly dark fic but i cldnt stop thinking abt a darkest timeline happy ending

The ultimate fantasy: the recovery of the irrecoverable past. But if I could daydream about an invented happy future...

REBORN: JOURNALS AND NOTEBOOKS 1947-1963, Susan Sontag

I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way,  
and I don't want to be the kind that says _the wrong way._

LITANY IN WHICH CERTAIN THINGS ARE CROSSED OUT, Richard Siken

I'll rewrite this whole life and this time there will be so much love, you won't be able to see beyond it

BACKWARDS, Warsan Shire

A sense of almost lingers over them for a long time after. They cling to it, almost like it’s a raft. 

Troy’s throat still sometimes feels like it’s burning, a phantom pain, and he chases the memory of hearing his own voice the way only he can hear it for a long time afterwards. When he told Abed he missed it, Abed told him that the way you speak sounds different to you because you hear it through your bones, not through the air.

In Abed, that means: Troy will never hear his voice the same way again. It’s a unique kind of loss; everyone else will be able to play videos of him speaking and pretend like it’s alright. Only Troy will have to rely on his imperfect memory.

In Abed, it’s a permission to grieve.

Annie’s the first one who breaks, and the first one they leave behind. Abed insists they’ll bring her back, at first; all they have to do is stage a heist. All they have to do is make her better. All they have to do is cross over to the prime timeline and she will be okay. All they have to do _—_

Annie’s the first one who breaks.

Troy watches her get hauled off to crazy people jail and cries into Abed’s shoulder. “You can cry now,” Abed told him, a couple days ago. “You’re evil. There are less rules.”

  
  
Troy didn’t know how to say, _that was never the problem,_ mostly because he doesn’t know what the problem was. So he cries now, because he knows it will make Abed feel better. It doesn’t seem like that’s the right reason, but Britta isn’t really interested in therapizing anymore, so Troy doesn’t really care.

“She’s not really crazy,” Abed adds. “She’s not.”

  
  
“Shut up, Abed,” snarls Britta, because she’s not interested in therapizing so much as protecting. She’s not really Evil the way the rest of them are; she’s just forgotten how to rein in her harsh way of telling the truth. “Annie won’t be the same again. Stop kidding yourself, and stop telling Troy lies. He listens to you.”

_I’m not a child,_ Troy wants to protest, but he doesn’t like speaking aloud. It ruins the carefully balanced illusion he’s trying to create.

He’s not sure if it helps or not that Jeff isn’t even there to watch her go.

Shirley’s the next one to fall apart. She spends too much time at the Ballroom, and then when they kick her out, at the Vatican. Her kids start spending more time at her mother’s house. Her grades start slipping.

“She’ll be okay,” says Abed. “I have a plan.”

  
  
Britta’s not around this time to tell him to shut up.

So Troy nods; he wants to believe so badly every part of his body aches. “Cool,” he says.

“Cool cool cool,” says Abed, but it sounds toneless, like he’s just saying it because he knows it’s familiar.

Britta’s next. It’s the blue streak. “That’s all she is,” Abed says, almost nastily; “just a change in hair color.”

Troy opens his mouth to say, _no, that’s not right, that’s not fair, once she told me—_

He closes it. He’s still trying not to speak. Every time he talks, he can feel the melting plastic against his throat, even though it’s gone, even though he’s better now. _It ruins an illusion,_ he told Abed when Abed asked. Abed doesn’t ask him questions like that anymore. Abed looks at him now, like he might ask, but he doesn’t.

As always, the raft of almost.

Jeff takes a couple months. At first, Troy thinks it’s the felt goatees that get him, but that’s not right. Each of them fall apart differently: for Jeff, it’s just drawing the curtains over his heart and quietly fading out of their lives. 

“He’ll be back,” says Abed, as he tells Troy what Jeff is up to. Jeff transferred to City College about three months ago now. He’s doing consulting on the side and has bought himself a fancy apartment. When asked about it, he’d said that everything reminded him of Pierce.

It feels weird to grieve an asshole, but here they are.

Troy’s mom calls him while he’s still in the hospital. Abed has to pick up the phone for him; Troy hasn’t tried speaking yet. Abed puts her on speaker; they’re still in that perfect part of the friendship where they’re practically telepathically linked, so he generally knows what Troy is going to say.

It’s awesome, being able to talk to Abed without opening his mouth.

“Hey, baby,” Troy’s mom says over the phone. She sounds tinny. Troy wonders if his voice will sound like that, when he finally uses it. “I’m gonna come visit, okay?”

“He says thanks,” says Abed. “He can’t talk right now.”

“Oh, you must be Troy’s special friend Abed,” clucks his mom. “You’re a sweet boy, you know that? Thank you for taking care of him.”

“Always,” says Abed, and in that moment, Troy believes it.

He believes it for a long time after, too.

Abed knows to hang up when Troy’s mom turns the fact they’re out of a home into at first subtly and then not-so-subtly implying Troy’s dad is whatever the male equivalent of a slut is. “I think it’s still a slut,” Abed tells him, once Troy’s phone is off and tucked away. Troy just shrugs. He doesn’t have anything else to say.

He visits Annie. He doesn’t speak; he listens to her ramble. She doesn’t talk much sense at all, really; sometimes she mentions Inspector Spacetime and sometimes she says Pierce’s name and once Troy thinks he catches her speaking the prayer you’re supposed to say at Shabbat, or something like that.

“She’s still in there,” say the doctors whenever he comes to visit.

He nods, but that’s not right.

It’s not that Annie isn’t in there. It’s that Annie’s gotten all scrambled up. When he sometimes play videos of the stupid skits he and Abed used to do or whatever, he sees her righten for a moment, like she’s figuring something out. For a moment she’s Annie again. “Troy,” she’ll say, and smile at him, and then the illusion will break again.

The smile never reaches her eyes.

It’s like in those movies, where the bridge under the train starts to crumble, but you still think that maybe they’ll make it, maybe it’ll be fast enough, but the train is inevitably too heavy and the bridge inevitably falls apart and too much of the train is inevitably hanging off the edge, and it inevitably drags the whole thing down with it into the snow.

Troy doesn’t know how else to explain it.

Abed calls them all together after the funeral. He hands them goatees. He promises they’ll get Annie back. Britta doesn’t say, _that’s not how mental health works_ like she would, four or five months ago. It feels empty, without Pierce to say something about how Abed’s finally cracked, without Annie to cry, “Pierce!” 

The dean doesn’t even stop by. Everything about it is wrong, including that fresh blue streak in Britta’s hair. Troy still puts on the goatee, even after everyone leaves.

Abed almost smiles.

Almost.

He moves in with Britta while they sort out Pierce’s inheritance. Abed moves back in with his dad, but Troy’s not sure where else to go. Britta’s the one that offers. He helps her re-dye her hair and promises to help pay rent when Pierce’s lawyers give them the money. She shrugs and laughs. Her laugh is high-pitched and shrill. “Landlords are parasites, Troy,” she says, “don't worry about the money.”

She’s started going to protests again. That’s not such a bad thing, except for the way she always gets too caught up in it, too fast to egg on a cop, a fascist, someone _—_

“I just want to feel something again,” she admits when he patches up a particularly bad cut on her forehead.

He nods. He understands.

But Abed promises it’ll all be okay if they do this. And Troy loves Abed; that’s all he knows how to do. Even when everything is terrible, even when everyone is falling apart, Troy loves Abed the way he knows how to breathe. “Villains can be gay,” says Abed, as they watch the Little Mermaid in Britta’s tiny apartment while she’s out. “Look at Ursula. They modeled her after drag queens. Only the villains can be gay in Disney movies.” He frowns. “I don’t think our current narrative fits the Disney movie genre, but I do think villains are generally more queer-coded, anyway.”

Troy doesn’t respond. He listens to Ursula sing.

Ariel’s the one without a voice.

He keeps visiting Annie. Abed comes with him, because Abed can talk for Troy and Troy is running out of excuses for why he doesn’t speak. “Abed!” she says, sometimes. “Inspectors!” she says, others. One, she asks, “¿Dónde está la biblioteca?” and bursts into tears when Troy and Abed exchange glances.

Abed looks nervous around Annie, because she’s so unpredictable.

Troy shakes his head and pulls out his phone. He knows this means that only the Spanish Rap will calm her down at this point; he’s right, of course, and she quiets as Abed beatboxes, tinny over his phone’s speakers. “It’s 2009,” says Abed in the video. Evil Abed sucks in a breath.

“I miss 2009,” says Annie wistfully, herself for a moment. “Do you remember how Shirley and I planned a protest?”

“Like the lesbians on the news,” supplies Evil Abed, and Annie nods.

“Do you think Pierce will be mad at me?” she asks, but she doesn’t say why.

Abed cocks his head, like he’s really considering the implications of the question. “I don’t know,” he says, eventually. “It depends on the situation. And the existence of an afterlife.”

  
Annie starts to cry again until she’s given the felt goatee Abed brought to surprise her. Troy holds her hand the whole time, looking at Abed and shaking his head. Abed shrugs at him, like, _you won’t talk and I didn’t realize it would upset her._ He looks upset, too, like he’s realizing how far gone Annie really is.

When they leave, she tugs Troy close and whispers, “Will you bring me Adderall next time you visit? Please? For me? Just this one time, to take the edge off?”

She asks this every time.

Britta helps babysit Shirley’s kids. Troy helps.

“It’ll only be for a while,” Abed tells him when Troy comes back late after babysitting one night. Britta left early to track Shirley down and drive her home. Troy’s probably going to have to wake up early tomorrow to help Britta drive Shirley’s car back. “She’ll be normal again soon, if we do this right.”

Abed’s been spending more time at Britta’s house than at his dad’s. Gobi says Abed’s being unsettling. Abed says it’s because he has more important things to do than make falafel.

Troy believes him. He always believes Abed.

Jeff comes around first. “You can fix this?” he asks, pointing an accusatory finger at Abed.

“You shouldn’t be here,” says Abed. They’re in the cafeteria at Greendale, poking at the chicken fingers. He’s not wearing his goatee today, mostly because they have classes and it freaks other students out. Troy can see the outline of one, though, as Abed grows his facial hair out.

“Why not?” asks Jeff. “Too dangerous? Cut the bullshit, Abed.”

“No, because you don’t go to school here.” Abed pauses. “I have a plan. We can fix this.”

And because Jeff believes him, Troy believes him.

“We can fix Annie,” Abed says. “I promise.” They’re standing over the ashy remains of the apartment. Most of their stuff is fine; they’re allowed to take it in the next couple of weeks. Troy’s not sure if he wants it. Abed doesn’t seem to care about his collections of rare DVDs, his comics: he stands in the Dreamatorium with his felt goatee and closes his eyes.

It’s all he talks about, these days.

_We can fix this_ and _the prime timeline_ and _isn’t it easier, Troy, to be evil?_

Troy swallows and nods. It should be easier, to be evil. He can hold Abed’s hand out in public. Villains can be gay. 

(Ariel is the one without a voice).

Shirley’s next. She’s not allowed to see her kids anymore. “It’s not a crime to drink a little bit,” she slurs, sitting next to Abed in the cafeteria. Troy pats her arm, aiming for comforting, but she swats him off. Abed just looks at her, nodding.

“I have a plan,” he says.

“I know. Jeff told me.”

“You two still talk? Good.” Abed pulls out his notebook and writes something down. Troy doesn’t even try to look.

“You’ll help me get my babies back?” asks Shirley. She’s swaying, slightly. Troy’s pretty sure she has more bottles of booze in her backpack than Leonard does on Tuesdays, which is when the hipsters play drinking games with the AV club. She blinks at Abed, and oh, her eyes are full of tears. “You’ll help me, Abed?”

  
Abed nods. “Yes,” he says.

Troy swallows something large in his throat.

Britta’s last to come around. Troy still hangs out with her, though. She’s started smoking cigarettes again, so they sit out on her balcony for long hours in the evening while he chews his candy ones and Britta blows clouds of smoke over the alley. They watch the sky turn purple-grey because of light pollution and they try to catch the exact moment the street lamps turn on.

Sometimes she asks him if he can smoke, and he just shakes his head.

“I miss you talking,” she says.

He’s silent for a long time. She finishes her cigarette and lights up another one. “I miss my voice,” he eventually responds, robotic.

“I don’t,” she replies, shrugging. “I mean, I do.” She takes a puff. “I guess I just miss whatever stupid thing you had to say more. You don’t realize how much you miss things you thought were super annoying until they stop, I guess. Like, I miss Annie constantly telling me to just do my homework.”

“And the way Jeff would look at you, like, thank God it’s not me?” says Troy, and laughs.

It’s not his laugh, it’s some robot’s approximation of a laugh. But Britta still laughs with him.

He appreciates that, even if it sounds shrill and just a little unhinged.

After a long pause, she says, “God, I’d kill for some weed.”

He gives her a sidelong look. 

She shrugs at him, smiling a little bit. She has a cut on her lip from the fight she got into with a racist the other day. “What? It’s legal. We can get you some edibles or something, if you wanna partake.” She says _we_ like they’re going to invite someone else over, but Troy can’t think of anyone who’d want to smoke with them right now. Maybe Jeff, but Jeff’s at City College.

Troy closes his eyes. _Almost,_ he thinks. Jeff would almost say yes.

That’s what it takes, though: him speaking. Britta marches down to Abed and says, “I’m fucking tired of this. Jeff says you have a plan.”

“It starts with Annie,” Abed says.

“That’s a terrible idea,” says Britta. And then, slowly, as she picks at a scab on her arm, “But okay.”

  
Once, Troy chose this group over his voice. He swallowed a troll because he was certain it would save them. He still dreams about it; the troll is always comically too large, and Troy’s jaw becomes unhinged like a snake’s might, and then the troll is a mouse and he really is a snake, and he wakes up covered in sweat.

“Even your footsteps are quiet,” says Annie, sing-song.

Troy just shrugs as he sorts through the puzzle pieces. They’re doing another boat puzzle set. Annie’s been setting up the border, humming a song that Troy thinks is familiar but can’t recognize. He pulls out a corner piece and hands it to her. She gasps, delighted, and puts it into place.

When he leaves, she asks him for Adderall. He shakes his head.

He realizes halfway through the drive home she was singing _Somewhere Out There._

Evil Abed is prepared to saw off Lame Jeff’s arm. He tells Troy about it, about how he almost did it, about how they’re _so close—_

But Shirley is still drinking. Jeff goes out every night with her, now. He pretends like he isn’t. Britta keeps hooking up with emotionally unavailable men; Troy can hear her through the thin walls of the apartment. Annie still isn’t getting better, but she likes wearing the goatee Abed brought her.

Evil Abed tried to hurt Lame Jeff.

But Evil Abed holds Troy so tenderly. They haven’t kissed yet; he’s waiting for Troy to be ready because he loves him. Abed promises that everything will be better than okay: they’ll be together in the prime timeline _—_ isn’t that what Troy wants? 

He hasn’t asked Troy what he wants in months. All he talks about is Lame Abed.

Troy isn’t sure this is working.

Jeff says he knows how to get Annie out of the hospital. He says he can figure out how to get them Pierce’s money faster. He says that with a little time, he can figure out a case to get Shirley’s kids back to her. He says he can also find a way for Britta to sue her parents for emotional damages, if she wants.

He doesn’t have anything to offer Troy. “You have Abed,” he says, as if it’s that simple.

Troy shrugs. He’s not so convinced anymore: Abed doesn’t even talk about movies these days. He just talks about what Lame Troy and Lame Abed and Lame Annie are up to. He says that Lame Annie moved in with them. Abed’s wearing a full goatee now, and he’s encouraging Troy to keep trying for one.

Troy visits Annie at the hospital.

“What do you want?” he asks her. It’s the first time he’s talked to her since he started visiting her. He expects her to cry, to yell at him, to react. She just blinks, like his robot voice is the most natural thing in the world.

“Will you bring me a pill?” she asks instead. “Just one.”

He shakes his head no.

Britta comes home so beaten up one night Troy starts crying. He didn’t realize he’d stopped crying these past couple months, but it surprises him, how weird it feels and how fast he starts to sob and how he can’t stop. Britta has to bandage herself and then hold him, and he feels so stupid, but she just shushes him and rocks him and waits for him to speak.

When he cries, he feels like he sounds like a stupid Tamagochi doll or some video game noise when you lose.

“We have to stop,” he tells Britta in between tears. He doesn’t say what. “We have to stop.”

“I can’t,” she tells him. “I need this.”

That’s what Abed keeps saying, too. Not in so many words, but Troy knows what he means.

  
(What Abed means, is, _if I fix this then it won’t matter if I never caught the die_ and if _I fix this then I will have been clever enough_ and i _f I fix this I will have proven myself worthy enough to love you._ He never says the last one, but Troy hears it loud and clear every time they watch the Little Mermaid and Abed says, “I think Ursula steals Ariel’s voice in every timeline.”

What Abed means, is: people are predictable. They always do the same thing. Abed was never going to be fast enough to catch the dice in this timeline. He will never be as good as Abed in the prime timeline, who was smart enough and clever enough and dexterous enough. Evil Abed will never shine a light to Lame Abed.

What Abed means, is, _if I fix this then it won’t matter if I never caught the die._ )

He calls Abed at three in the morning. “I can’t do it,” he says. “I can’t replace Lame Troy.”

“You’re talking,” says Abed. He sounds surprised. He doesn’t sound like he’s been sleeping; Troy’s not shocked by that. Abed’s been turning up to class with dark rings under his eyes, if he shows up to class at all. He’s too busy writing things in his notebook and being _so close_ to figuring it out.

“Yeah,” says Troy. He still hates the way he sounds. “You weren’t responding to your texts.”

Annie greets him one day by signing something to him. He cocks his head. “She’s given up speaking,” says the doctor, frowning down at her, “because she wanted to be in a silent movie format this week? She said if we told you that you’d understand.”

Troy nods to indicate he understands and waves at her. 

She scribbles something for him. _I’m learning how to make those title cards. And how to sign, just for good measure. They even let me check out some books from the library!_

He gives her a thumbs up. His world goes monochrome, just for a moment; she smiles at him as she writes, and he realizes with a jolt that she looks a little more like herself. Like she’s sitting on the other side of the table in the study room and making a face at him that means, _you should really be doing your homework._

He feels his face wet with tears. She passes him a note. It has a perfect old-timey border.

_I think you’d like ASL, Troy._

(When he leaves, she doesn’t ask him for a pill).

He buys a set of magnets on his car ride home. He places the title card Annie gave him on the fridge. Then he grabs some old photos of the study group, and hangs them with the card as well, alongside a couple Greendale newspaper clippings that always makes the group laugh. It’s not much, but he’s pleased.

He pulls Britta aside. “We have to stop,” he says again. “We need to move on. I need your help.”

  
  
“I’ll just Britta it,” she tells him. She’s swaying slightly; she went out for drinks with Jeff and Shirley. 

He shakes her, a little bit. “You’re a good friend,” he says. “You’re good at this.”

“Troy _—_ ”

“Please,” he says. He can’t whisper anymore. His throat is sore. This is the most words consecutively he’s said in months. He can already feel the plastic of the troll melting against his skin again; tears prick at the corner of his eyes. “Britta, please, help. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

She looks at him, surprised. “Oh,” she says, sobering. “Come to the couch, Troy.”

They devise a plan. A counter-plan to the prime timeline plan. A saving Evil Abed from himself plan. Mostly, it involves waiting. So: they wait. 

It turns out, Britta’s also been visiting Annie. They go together one week to surprise her, and Annie cries so hard they think it’s a mistake at first. But no, Annie tells them through tears, she once thought that if she were ever to play matchmaker, she would have tried to put them together. She laughs as she cries.

Troy finds himself laughing, too.

Abed is waiting for them when they come home. “You’re getting close,” he says.

Britta shrugs. She has a bruise that’s yellowing on her cheek. She’s been going to more peaceful protests and doing graffiti, rather than picking fights. “We just wanted to visit Annie,” she says. “And anyways, I thought you wanted us to return to normal group dynamics, anyway. So we’re more convincing when we cross over.”

Abed frowns. He looks angry, in that blank-faced way of his: Abed always looks a little emotionless when he’s feeling full of emotion. 

Troy also shrugs, unsure of what else to do. He doesn’t say anything.

Abed looks at him, quiet for a moment. And then he nods, and turns to go.

Troy signs up for Greendale’s ASL class next semester. Britta takes it with him. Abed watches, and frowns and frowns and frowns. He writes notes in his notebook near-constantly now. “We have to hurry,” Troy says, watching Abed write feverishly. “I can’t lose him, Britta.”

He doesn’t say: _I’m worried I’ve already lost him_ or _I think I lost him the moment he decided he didn’t deserve to love me._

She won’t understand if he says, “Ursula’s the one that stole Ariel’s voice,” so he doesn’t say anything at all.

Things get better and worse. They figure out what Pierce’s projected will would be, and decide to ignore all the notes about sailing that they could never decode. The six of them split his fortune six ways; Britta uses the money to go to therapy and Troy uses the money to pay his portion of the rent.

It seems like things are getting better: they can afford to get better now. They can afford to get Annie better, specialized care, so she has a bit more independence. 

But Jeff crashes his car and gets a DUI. Britta has to pick him up at the hospital; he has a minor concussion. Shirley’s failing out of her Greendale classes.Abed isn’t even showing up to school anymore.

Whenever Troy hangs out with Abed, which is less and less these days, Abed only talks about the prime timeline. He’ll only watch the Little Mermaid, over and over and over again.

_Ursula stole Ariel’s voice._

Troy can’t find the words to say, _You deserve to love me._

Shirley’s problem is the easiest to solve. They get her church to help them convince her to get a sponsor. When Pierce’s money comes in, they help get her a therapist, too. “Let’s do alcohol-free game nights at my apartment,” says Britta, and they hide all the booze in Troy’s closet when Shirley sighs and comes over anyway.

She grits her teeth through her withdrawals and goes to therapy and gets her grades up dutifully. “I’m going to open a sandwich shop,” she says, pointing a finger at Troy and Britta.

Britta holds up her hands and laughs. “I believe you,” she replies.

Troy thinks it’s enough. He hopes it’s enough.

(When he finds her passed out drunk with Leonard and the hipsters, he knows it’s not).

  
Troy and Britta keep visiting Annie. “Will Pierce be mad?” she asks.

“No,” says Britta, reaching out and holding Annie’s hand. “When he thought I was gay, it was more of an _I told you so_ than anything else. He’s not mad.”

“Oh,” says Annie through watery tears.

_Oh,_ thinks Troy. It seems like that’s enough.

Jeff gets fired for drinking on the job. He calls Britta, drunk and sad and lonely, and she goes to him. “We can fix this, Troy,” she says. Her hands are shaking.

He wants to ask her when she’ll stop, but he gets it. He wants to fix everyone, too. He wants to go back to being a stupidly happy study group at community college with a super awesome best friend. He wants it so bad he knows he’d go if Abed called him. So he lets her go and does her dishes so she won’t be stressed out about them when she gets back.

Abed asks him to go visit the Dreamatorium on the ninth of December. “I think I’m going to join the A/C school,” says Troy, as they walk through the ashes. It’s one of the hardest things he’s had to tell Abed; it keeps getting lodged in his throat whenever he tries to say it, but he has to. 

He has to go.

Abed has been inspecting the orange tape but he turns and looks at him, eyes glossy. “What?”

“We can’t keep doing this, Abed. No one’s getting better.”

“We just need to shift genre,” insists Abed. “We can stop being a tragedy, if we just _—_ ”

“No,” shouts Troy, but he can’t shout because of his stupid voice. He’s crying already. “We can’t do this.” He’s thought a lot about it, the darkest timeline. About how he’s pretty sure guilt is driving Abed as crazy as it is Annie. “Abed, this is not your fault. Every single one of us could have prevented this, but we didn’t.”

“I should have predicted it,” says Abed.

“You didn’t predict it even in the prime timeline,” says Troy.

“I’m better than _—_ ”

“No,” says Troy, trying to shout again. “You’re you.”

Abed shakes his head. He’s silent for a long time. “I thought you were going to die,” he says, eventually. “Your burns were really bad.”

  
  
“It was stupid, I know,” sighs Troy. 

“No,” replies Abed sharply. “It wasn’t. But you never should have had to sacrifice anything. I should have been more thoughtful in the Dreamatorium. I should have caught the die, anyway; I know that a lamer version of me couldn’t stand the chaos enough to do it. That’s why we have to go back, Troy. So we can be us again.”

Troy is quiet for a long time. And then he says, “what if I had gone to City College instead?”

Abed cocks his head, confused. “You wouldn’t have,” he says. “People are predictable. You always choose to go to Greendale.”

“Because of the ads,” agrees Troy, and shoves his hands in his pockets. “But you don’t know someone didn’t flip a coin whether or not to air that particular ad. It’s Greendale. They could have done it, I don’t know. We do some really stupid things to decide important things sometimes. So what would have happened if I went to City College?”

  
  
Abed opens his mouth, closes it. “We’re in the Dreamatorium,” he says, quietly. Troy nods. “I could show you.”

“Show me,” says Troy. They do their handshake.

The beat is off.

_Render Environment: Timeline Where Troy Goes to City College_.

They’re in a classroom. Abed’s in a cardigan, smiling in that close-lipped way of his, the kind he tries to keep resting on his face to keep people happy. He sits in the middle. Shirley’s there, too. She looks normal, if a little exhausted; Shirley’s always been good at hiding that kind of thing, but Troy can see the bags under her eyes.

She sits on the opposite side of the room for Abed.

The teacher is talking about marketing.

“You’re in a business class?” Troy asks; in the Dreamatorium, his voice sounds like his own. He appreciates that detail of Abed.

Evil Abed standing next to him nods. “In this timeline, you aren’t there to keep the group apart. We bicker too often, and eventually it drives Jeff out of his mind and the group actually splits up. Annie leaves first because she doesn’t have you there to keep her. Then Shirley goes. Then Britta, who gets annoyed with Jeff. And then Jeff leaves, and because Pierce annoys me, I leave too.” He points to where this Abed is staring at the board, not writing notes. “Britta doesn’t have Jeff to back her up, so I can’t make as successful as a movie. But my father agrees to let me take media classes if I major in business, so I stay at Greendale. The only difference is that I don’t have any friends.”

Troy nods. “But you’re not evil?”

“Worse,” says Abed. “I’m still lonely.”

The Dreamatorium shuts off, and Evil Abed is staring at Evil Troy.

“I love you,” says Evil Troy in his robotic monotone. It’s a goodbye; both of them know it. 

“I know,” says Evil Abed. His eyes are red-rimmed.

So: Troy goes to the A/C School and shaves his goatee. He likes it. No one talks to him, and it’s lonely, but they still let him take ASL classes and he can fix the machines the way he couldn’t fix the study group. Everything comes together with grease under his hands. It needs to be enough.

It should be enough.

It almost is.

Sometimes, he thinks he catches Abed checking up on him. He sees him everywhere, and he knows he’s only dreaming half the time because Abed leaves little felt goatees on his pillow like reminders: you are still evil. You still have a job to do. It isn’t fair, I love you, please come back.

That last one, Troy isn’t sure if that’s a projection of his own desires or if that’s what Abed’s really saying. Either way, whenever they’re allowed movie night, Troy always asks to watch the Little Mermaid.

“That’s for kids, asshole,” says someone.

He shrugs. “I like the music.”

He’s glad they don’t watch it, though; he’s seen it so many times with Abed at this point he has every line memorized. Every time he sees it, a fresh wave of grieve crashes over him. He misses being able to sing. Mostly, he misses Abed. He thinks he’s been missing Abed since Pierce died.

He dreams about kissing Abed. About holding his hand. 

  
One way of saying _I love you_ in sign language is the same way Spiderman shoots webs. It’s the _I_ , the _L,_ and the _Y_ all together. There’s something comforting about that coincidence; with great power comes great responsibility. And Spiderman chooses that responsibility out of love.

Troy thinks he almost had the power to fix things.

  
Almost.

He starts writing a list.

He’s the One True Repairman. (He has the power to repair man).

He decides he has to go home.

He finds Abed first. He looks different: for starters, he shaved the goatee. Abed freezes when he sees Troy, that real kind of freeze where his face is totally blank because Troy has, for once, genuinely and truly surprised him. “You’re back,” he says, and though he says it without inflection, it’s a question. In Abed, that means: _are you going to leave me again._

“I need to fix things,” he says. “I need to repair them.”

Abed shakes his head. _We are not your responsibility,_ he signs.

In Abed, that’s a love confession.

Abed’s the one that stopped them. The one that lectured Jeff and Shirley into getting a sponsor, and everyone into getting a therapist. (Actually, Abed says, he lectured Jeff to lecture Shirley and get a sponsor, and then Jeff lectured Shirley to get a sponsor, but Troy has trouble wrapping his head around that).Abed’s the one who visited Annie every week while Troy was gone. The one who supported Britta so she could spend some time recovering from her trauma without having to take care of everyone else. The one that saw Troy leave and knew that enough was enough was enough. 

No almost this time.

_I didn’t want to ask you to stop,_ signs Troy. He’s crying. _I know you don’t like it when people tell you what to do._

“I want to be your friend more than I care about that,” Abed tells him. And then he frowns. “We’re not evil anymore.”

Troy shakes his head. “No.” He speaks this word.

“But genre suggests that if we’re not villains in this narrative _—_ ”

“No,” says Troy again, and pulls out the list he wrote out using a legal pad. It’s movies, books, whatever he could compile. “Anyone could be gay,” he says; it’s full of queer coding and subtext and text. _But I’m A Cheerleader. Frog and Toad. Paris Is Burning._

Abed frowns. “But you don’t deserve a villain.” But he takes the list.

_You aren’t a villain, A-b-e-d,_ he signs, now that his hands are free. He has to spell Abed’s name. _You’re just a person. It wasn’t your fault, no more than it was Annie’s fault or Pierce’s fault or my fault or Jeff’s fault._ He inhales; it’s a rattle noise, a horrible sound. He’s still getting used to it. _You’re not Ursula,_ he adds.

Abed cocks his head. _What?_ he signs.

_I mean, I love you._

Shirley and Jeff keep each other sober. She gets her kids back. Britta starts volunteering more hours at the animal shelter. Abed moves in with them. Annie starts getting better, and they’re all there to pick her up when she’s allowed to leave.

_Hello, T-r-o-y,_ she signs when she sees him.

_A-n-n-i-e,_ he signs back. 

He kisses Abed at a pride parade next June. Annie makes buttons for everyone and Shirley helps decorate her new church’s float. Abed’s _he/him_ and _they/them_ pins glint in the sunlight. “I think I was wrong,” Abed tells him, cocking his head as they watch the parade. “Villains aren’t the only ones who actually get to be gay.”

_There’s a difference,_ agrees Troy. _Plus, they don’t get to be happy._

_I love you,_ signs Abed.

Troy replies by doing the I-L-Y sign back, and Abed, for the first time in months, smiles his real smile.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me in the comments or @ figbian on tungle / twit i have a LOT of opinions abt how they all recover from the incident & the problems they have w it <3


End file.
